"Old Houses, Bad Schools and Crime"

Old Town, San Pablo is the southern most point of San Pablo, the city you find just to the north of Richmond. As you might expect given that its called “Old Town,” there are a lot of older homes here. I would guess that maybe one in three houses here dates back to World War 2 or before. A lot of these are tiny little wood paneled walk-ups with tiny little flat yards—the kind of places you only see in movies these days.

The second third of homes in this neighborhood are made up of mostly Ranch style homes from the post War era when baby boomers were coming home. These are the smaller rundown looking versions of those homes, not the really nice long flat versions that you might sometimes think of when you sometimes think of the really nice version of these kinds of homes.

Home prices are dirt cheap. You can basically get a home here for under $250,000. Of the fifty odd homes that have sold here recently none have broken that barrier.

Of course a lot of people rent here. You can find a 2 bedroom for under $1000/month.

Of course, just like in Richmond, the major problems with trying to live here in Old Town is the combination of terrible schools and crime. In terms of schools, these are really pretty bad across the board.

Crime is also pretty bad, which is one of the drawbacks of the area. The crime rate in San Pablo is almost twice as large as the national crime rate. That is not as bad as Oakland or even Richmond, but it is still pretty bad.